When the Music Doesn't Fit the Setting

Hiking in the Italian Alps, we stopped at a home/cafe to refill our water bottles and heard Bruce Springsteen belting out "Glory Days." Layered in a sweatshirt, jacket and gloves and doing farm chores on the pre-dawn fall morning, I had trouble delighting in the Beach Boys "Surfin' U.S.A." On my way home from the Y, I stop at the gas station/convenience store that sits among the poultry barns and corn fields at the village's edge. Standing behind the man in Carhartts, I smile when I hear the Grateful Dead singing "Touch of Grey."